How My Posture is Changing

Photo by Paige Cody on Unsplash

I’ve been kind of quiet on here. I have a lot I’m working through that is a bit hard to articulate for me at the time. Plus, taking four grad classes spring over semester was a lot!

But I’m also thinking about where I fit into this Substack now. I love to write, and I love this community. Thank you for following along with me. Also, I believe deeply in the work of my last book on developing our truest faces before the face of God and one another.

A difficult part for me lately is just the whole culture of evangelical writing. I do not consider myself in that category anymore. And yet, I’m finding something hard to exist in, even for those writers who are on the edges or fully broken away from evangelicalism. And that is the whole influencer space. There is a lot of self-importance attached to it. It just seems like such a hustle to write. And to write about the latest thing.

I don’t know about you, but my nervous system is jacked up from every latest thing. Of course, I care about all of it—both politically and in the church and how they are connected. But I need to think about what I post now and how that will affect future clients when they look me up. Do you see all the intricacies involved? And I also wonder what you readers care to follow.

I need to think about where I am going. And I am not going in the direction of becoming a so-called Christian therapist. I am in the direction of becoming a therapist who is a Christian, but who will bracket that to help each client live according to their values. And this is important to me. I think our spirituality is important and plan to incorporate that into my practice, but conversion has no part in my future vocation. I believe in a God who is bigger than that. And I have seen way too much with the damages done in “Christian” counseling. That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the good ones out there. Man, I need to keep listening to them. Praise God for them! But that is not where I am directed to practice.

I wrote a post a bit ago about my desire to be a door opener, and then a more granular follow-up on why that is so damn hard. And that will always be on the forefront of my mind and heart. But how that may transfer into my vocation as a counselor in training and as a writer is not dogmatic. I need to trust God to reveal himself when he wants to. And that is a loaded sentence because I have wanted him to reveal himself to me so many times when he knew it was in my best interest to be hidden. I freaking hate that. But I see the work that is done there. I exist there more than I want to admit.

Proving his realness isn’t my vocation. My vocation is looking for and opening doors.

So I want to be transparent with where I am for any supporters and subscribers. This is my direction—I am wanting to reach the disillusioned and also those just transitioning in life. I want to be a door opener. There is another real story than the ones so many of us are telling ourselves. It’s full of wonder, mystery, risk, and imagination. We have one life. What matters? Who matters? What or is there anything after we leave this world? Is it here now? How does that change the way we live? Where is beauty? What is the weight of it? This is where I am moving to those who want to stick around. That, and maybe some reflections I am having as a student of clinical mental health.